The brave new workplace

A growing class of workers don't want to be clock-punchers. And they're not relying on any one company to foster their careers.

September 17, 2003|By Elizabeth Brewster, Special to the Tribune.

Picture this: A rustic mountain cabin in Montana, hundreds of miles from the corporate office, equipped with all the technology you need to do the job you love--plus the freedom to reinvent that job from time to time.

Sound good? It did to Lonna Braverman, 49, human resources director for Oak Brook-based SEI Information Technology, which also has offices in North Dakota and Los Angeles.

Six years ago, Braverman and her husband traded their Chicago home for a log cabin outside Bozeman, Mont., and the 23-year SEI veteran became part of the company's first big experiment in workplace flexibility and telecommuting. As she and her husband added on rooms to their former vacation cabin, Braverman's job evolved from software project management to recruiting to heading the company's human resources department.

Braverman isn't alone in the wilderness: By 2007, more than half of the U.S. workforce will be made up of "emergent" workers who eschew traditional workplace values for new expectations about flexibility and unconventional work arrangements, according to new research from Spherion Employment Solutions in Ft. Lauderdale.

Also by 2007, most other workers will be transitioning to this new mindset, says Spherion president Robert Morgan. Only 8 percent of the workforce will seek a traditional workplace with long-term job stability, he adds.

Whereas the traditional workers think longevity should be rewarded by promotions, see job changes as damaging to one's career and expect a career path to be carved out by their employer, new-school workers view job change as vehicle for growth and measure loyalty by what they bring to their company. They also tend not to like organizational charts and thrive on gaining new experiences.

In the past, most workers have said, " `I want to come in from 8 to 5, be told what to do, get a paycheck and retire at the end,'" said Carol Kinsey Goman, a consultant in Berkeley, Calif., and author of "This Isn't the Company I Joined" (KCS Publishing, $24.95), scheduled to be published in January.

By contrast, "the new emergent worker says, `I want to come in when I want and work when I want and be rewarded for the results," she said.

Such employees are a product of the work environment over the past decade, a decade marked by uncertainty, Morgan says.

"There are not many people who haven't been impacted by downsizing or right-sizing and have had to develop their own career," he said. "We're finding emergent workers in just about all industries, all geographic areas."

Experts predict that when the sluggish job market finally picks up, emergent workers will really begin to exert their newfound clout. But already new workplace values are taking hold.

For instance, remember that old saw about your loyalty being suspect if you leave a company and then return to it? Forget it, say many new-school workers.

"One of our greatest sources of hires now is rehires," said Julie Wood, 37, area director of human resources at Ernst & Young's Chicago office, who left and "boomeranged" back to the company herself five years ago. "It's definitely been a change over the past several years. We want to create lifelong relationships with people."

Ernst & Young has even formalized its Flexible Work Arrangement (FWA) program, in part to help retain top female employees who work with clients. Nearly 10 percent of the company's 23,000 U.S. employees have signed on for a flexible schedule, including 32-year-old Jackie Meyer, a senior manager in the Chicago office's tax consulting group.

Meyer has taken advantage of several different flexible work arrangements during the past five years, from a three-day workweek to her current compressed workweek of four 10-hour days. Each year Meyer prepares a business plan that details how she'll serve her clients and get her work done under the arrangement, which must be approved by her boss and the human-relations department.

Part of the bargain in any unconventional work arrangement, according to Meyer, is being flexible about working from home and coming into the office when necessary.

"I work Monday through Thursday, and I say I'm out of the office on Fridays. I don't say I will never come into the office [or work from home] on Fridays," she said.

Braverman agrees. "I've had to be very flexible, and I've had to be willing to travel when needed," she said.

Meyer also has invested in equipment to do her job from a home office. "At home, I've had to have my own technology upgraded--like a second phone line, a fax machine, a high-speed Internet connection," she said. "Some things the firm reimburses me for, but some of it I just think is important."

As companies struggle to adapt to the growing number of workers who demand flexibility and growth opportunities, many of the old career success rules are being rewritten. How can you make sure you're not left behind in the new workplace?